LISNews: Librarian News

I ran out of time yesterday to post this one, but since it\'s only one day past Halloween...

A high school in OK City suspended a 15-year-old student after she cast a magic spell that caused a teacher to become sick. She had read a library book about Wicca beliefs, and admitted she \"Might\" be a wiccan, and that was good enough for the principal to suspend her for \"a disruption of the education process\". The ACLU is all over this one. Just in case you\'re missing the funny part here, she read a book that allowed her to cast a spell that made a teacher sick, so they suspended her. Can they possibly, honeslty, really, actually believe this girl is a Witch with the ability to make people sick after reading ONE book?? It took me years before I could do that!

Tomorrow marks the 1st birthday of LISNews, I have posted 964 stories, nothing even comes close to this one.

Read on for the full press release from the ACLU. -- Read More

The Economist has a Story on A group of researchers at the School for Information Systems and Management at the University of California, Berkeley have doen an interesting study. They say the estimated amount of unique information the world is currently producing each year has reached about two exabytes. While unique content on paper and film grows slowly, shipments of optical and magnetic storage media are doubling each year. In uncompressed form they total 1.4m terabytes.

Want it from the \"Horse\'s Mouth\"?
They have posted Charts, and a lengthy Executive Summary at UC Berkely

An unrealted (or is it?) stolen map Story from ABC. They talk
about a
just-published book about the notorious map thief,
Gilbert Bland. The
book \"The Island of Lost Maps,\" by Miles Harvey
states some reasons that Bland was able to get
away with what he did, and some of the reasons
involved for his actions. They also talk about the
librarians at the various institutions he
plundered, as well as police and university officials.

\"The allure of antique maps is even stronger,
not just for their art and craft — renderings of far-off
lands, decorated by wind-blowing gods, sea monsters,
naked Amazons or other imaginary attractions — but for
the possibilities that lie beyond their limited or
guessed-at boundaries.\"

Ready for the weekend? Before you shut down the computer check out the Studio B
Buzz highlights. A study predicts a strong book
publishing future but a survey shows that Internet users
prefer the paper kind.... -- Read More